Jihadists with the Al-Qaeda affiliate known as the Al-Nusra Front took control of several villages in Syria’s Idlib province over the weekend and reportedly seized weapons from Western-backed moderate rebel groups.

Upwards of 80 American-made TOW anti-tank missiles reportedly
were captured by Al-Qaed-linked fighters in Syria after
Western-supported opposition groups were overrun or defected to
Al-Nusra Front

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on
Sunday that Al-Nusra fighters were successful with weekend
advances that earned them control of the town of Khan Al-Sobol,
as well as “most of the towns and villages of Al-Zaweyi
Mountain in the countryside of Idlib,” citing unnamed
sources described by the Observatory as reliable and trusted.

In addition to seizing the town of Khan Al-Sobol, the Al-Qaeda
linked extremist group has also allegedly taken control over M’arshorin, M’sran,
Dadikh, KafarBatikh and Kafruma, per the Observatory’s reporting,
“where the Islamic battalions and Hazm are located.”

According to an article published late Sunday by the Washington Post, rebel commanders, activists
and analysts in Syria corroborated reports that moderate rebels
“either surrendered or defected” to Al-Nusra over the
weekend upon the group’s advance, with area residents adding to
the paper that the defeated groups handed over their weapons.
This could be a serious blow to the Obama administration’s effort
to create a significant opposition force capable of fighting the
so-called Islamic State and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s
forces. The US planned to arm and train at least 5,000 fighters
from CIA-vetted moderate groups; however, the latest setback may
complicate American efforts.

According to the Post, some Syrians are unwilling to join
Western-backed opposition groups. “When American airstrikes
targeted Al-Nusra, people felt solidarity with them because Nusra
are fighting the regime, and the strikes are helping the
regime,” Raed Al-Fares, an activist leader in Kafr Nabel, in
Idlib, told the Post. “Now people think that whoever in the
Free Syrian Army gets support from the U.S.A. is an agent of the
regime.”

A day earlier on Saturday, the Observatory reported that
militants belonging to the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or
ISIL, have traveled individually into Idlib province recently to
assist with the Al-Nusra Front’s fight against the Syrian
Revolutionaries Front, or SRF — an anti-government battalion that
has reportedly received support from the United State and other
western nations opposed to the Assad regime.

Al-Raqqah Magazine, an online media group that routinely posts
updates about the Islamic State and Al-Nusra, said on Twitter
early Monday that a trove of military goods including 10 tanks
and more than 80 anti-tank, or TOW, missiles, were taken from the
SRF.

The International Business Times reported that Al-Raqqah’s claims could not be
independently verified, however, and AFP and Al-Jazeera both said it wasn’t clear where
the allegedly seized weapons had originated from. Al-Jazeera and
the Post both acknowledged, however, that the Hazm movement is
indeed among the anti-Assad groups that has been handed US-made
weapons in the past, including anti-tank missiles, which could
now be in the hands of Al-Nusra and Islamic State fighters
despite a multi-nation effort to eradicate the former
organization amidst an intensifying campaign of violence in Iraq
and Syria.

“Hussam Omar, a spokesman for Harakat Hazm, refused to
confirm whether American weaponry had been captured by the
Al-Qaeda affiliate because, he said, negotiations with Jabhat
al-Nusra are underway,” Liz Sly wrote for the Post. Hazm,
Sly reported, has received “small arms and ammunition
alongside non-lethal aid in the form of vehicles, food and
uniforms from the United States and its European and Persian Gulf
Arab allies grouped as the Friends of Syria alliance.”

If either Al-Nusra or the so-called Islamic State has indeed
successfully seized American-provided weapons, then it wouldn’t
be the first time in recent weeks that efforts to equip moderate
rebels intent on eliminating those groups have backfired for the
US. Last month, Pentagon spokesman Army Colonel Steve Warren
said a bundle of weapons the military had air
dropped in the region “probably fell into enemy hands.” That
same week, the Islamic State published a video showcasing what
they called “some of the military equipment that was dropped by
American forces.”